


luke 1:29

by SheRoseFromTheSea



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: Art History, Avatrice, Bodily Autonomy, Camila/Lilith subtext, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Freedom, Heartwarming, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Inaccurate Christianity, Karaoke, Museums, Responsibility, light allusions to canon trauma, one good pun, very very light blood and guts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25387267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheRoseFromTheSea/pseuds/SheRoseFromTheSea
Summary: Ava is troubled by her Halo. Beatrice is a stressed-out art history textbook. Will they finally kiss? Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) runs the light board.Beatrice shrank away from light when she was afraid. Get her to say or smile more than she intended and she'd switch off the lamp, blow out the candle, awkwardly sidestep a little too obviously into darkness. It was cute, but frustrating. Ava sometimes found herself tripping over her own feet trying to follow Beatrice in the shadows. Ava hated the dark. It felt lonely, and weighty, like phasing through stone.
Relationships: Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva, Sister Lilith & Ava Silva
Comments: 16
Kudos: 370





	luke 1:29

Beatrice shrank away from light when she was afraid. Get her to say or smile more than she intended and she'd switch off the lamp, blow out the candle, awkwardly sidestep a little too obviously into darkness. It was cute, but frustrating. Ava sometimes found herself tripping over her own feet trying to follow Beatrice in the shadows. Ava hated the dark. It felt lonely, and weighty, like phasing through stone.

In the Cat's Cradle, Ava would leave a candle lit when she tried to sleep. Beatrice would blow it out every time with an annoyed sigh and a quiet warning about fire hazards, but Ava didn't really mind—at least it gave Beatrice a reason to drop by her room, even though it was only for a few seconds each night. She would stare intently at Beatrice's illuminated face for the instant before the light snuffed out, and sometimes the afterimage was bright enough to last until she fell asleep.

They were on a mission. Beatrice and Ava made their way through an old museum outside Paris, wood floors creaking underfoot as they cleared each room. Dust lit up like fireflies in shafts of sunshine cast from the windows. Ava raced from painting to painting, in awe of everything. This was supposed to be a stealth mission, and she was being too loud. Beatrice didn't have the heart to tell her.

Beatrice strayed from the central halls to peer into an unlit storage room, pausing to let her eyes adapt. Empty picture frames, leaves and branches carved into them, like a forest waiting for animals to fill it. Steel filing cabinets pressed against all four walls, reflecting twisted images of the frames back and forth to make an endless tunnel. She stepped curiously into the room, and the image of her body spiraled out into the reflections. Then she couldn't hear Ava's footsteps anymore.

"Ava?" Beatrice made herself disappear into the shadows of the doorway. The gallery she'd come from, where Ava had been just a moment ago, was empty. She stopped her breath, and listened. Nothing. Just the steady rush of air pushing through the museum's HVAC as goose bumps spread across her arms.

Fuck this. She abandoned her position and darted across the gallery, running expertly on the old floorboards without making a sound. She couldn't stop a short exhalation of relief when she caught a glimpse of Ava through a silver-plated doorway on the left, and it came out as a whisper, "Ava," too quiet for anyone to have understood. But something about Ava's posture—enraptured, frozen, like something had taken over her body—made her heart drop.

"Ava?" Beatrice said as she slowly approached and circled around to Ava's front. "Are you okay?"

Ava's face was horrifically beautiful. Standing close now, Beatrice could see that the Halo was shining dimly—not enough to be seen through the back of Ava's armor, but a soft glow poured out of Ava's lips and cheeks and eyes. She looked happy and sad all at once. Beatrice's stomach tied in knots, and she tried to speak, but couldn't seem to remember any words. She tried to root her feet to the ground, wanting more than anything to run to the nearest bathroom, to hide in a stall and cry.

Their eyes met, and Ava shivered. "Hey, Bea. What's up?"

"You okay?" said Beatrice, frowning but starting to relax incrementally.

"Oh!" Ava smiled and reached out, her hand stopping just a centimeter away from Beatrice's wrist. "Yeah. Sorry. Look behind you."

Beatrice turned. There was a painting there, taking up half a wall in a thick frame of dull-gold ferns. It showed a young peasant sitting on a bed, her blanket crumpled up beside her like a cerebral cortex, her head tilted slightly as she watched an apparition—an impossible pillar of light at the end of the bed, cracked and tall and luminous, suffusing the scene in an unearthly warmth.

"L'annonciation," said Ava in an extraordinarily bad French accent, reading the title written on the painting's frame and grinning. She had been so perfectly frozen just a minute ago, a kind of pleasant numbness, but now she was having trouble standing still.

"You like it?" Beatrice looked...smug.

Ava narrowed her eyes. "You planned this, didn't you?"

"I..." Beatrice smiled disarmingly. "I knew it was in the museum. I was hoping we'd run into it. I thought... I thought it might... It's my favorite painting."

"You have a favorite painting?" said Ava. Of course Beatrice had a favorite painting.

Beatrice dipped her head hesitantly. "Yes?" she said. She wasn't sure why she pitched her voice like she was asking a question.

"That's cute," said Ava. Shit, said that out loud. "Umm. Tell me about it? L'annonciation, I mean." It was hard to concentrate with Beatrice's face so close. Light seemed to be falling on Beatrice from all directions—from the Halo, yes, but it was also as if the painting was a light itself, bathing her in warm colors of orange and red. Optical illusion, probably. There was a skylight above them. Was it sunset already?

Beatrice tried to ignore the heat building on her neck. _Cute_. She willed herself to steamroll through it. "Right. Yes. The Annunciation. The archangel Gabriel telling Mary that her child is going to be the Son of God. Many artists have tried their hand at it for the last two thousand years. This version was painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner. A lot of the time Mary looks like a white European noblewoman, and Gabriel is a flower. Or, like, a duck or something." She smiled. "But this one...she's in peasant's clothing. And she looks like she's from Palestine, as she should. And Gabriel is..."

"Terrifying," said Ava.

Beatrice stared at Ava's face. "Beautiful." The Halo was getting brighter. She could feel the heat of it. She wondered if it was possible to get a sunburn from an angelic artifact. Or was this her own body's reaction to being near Ava? It was hard to tell sometimes. "And yes, terrifying." It was like she'd been living in a cave for days and only just stepped outside. Everything was too bright.

Ava smiled hollowly. "It's a lot of pressure. You know, bun in the oven _and_ surprise, it's the son of God. He's literally in your uterus. Yikes." She tried not to scratch at the embossed pattern of the Halo on her back, scars pressed up against her armor. _Hush, little lamb. You're a very lucky little girl._

Beatrice shook her head in a quick, tiny motion. "The artist—Tanner, his mother was a teacher who escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad as a child, and his father was a minister. He was their eldest son. His middle name honored a battle that John Brown's abolitionists lost, honored a town razed by slavers. He repeatedly suffered from severe illness." The words seemed to bubble out of Beatrice too fast, each sentence disjointed a little from the last. "He was born at the dawn of war, and he was called to be an artist. Do you think pressure was alien to him? Doesn't she look afraid to you? She looks so scared," she said, gesturing sharply at the Virgin Mary in the painting and failing to meet Ava's eyes. A stranger might not quite notice, but Ava could hear the subtle edge of panic like a blade in Beatrice's voice.

"Yeah." Ava didn't move her gaze away from Beatrice's face. Didn't try to touch her either. Was Beatrice's lower lip trembling? Seconds passed in tense silence until inspiration struck. "Hey, if a baby's gonna become a nun when she grows up, that means the mother's got a nun in the oven."

Beatrice groaned, but some of the tension seemed to drain away from her posture. "That was genuinely horrible. As in actually unpleasant."

Ava shrugged with her whole body. "I know. I know! I'm tired! Not all my puns will be good. I'm not a goddamn machine."

"Language," said Beatrice automatically, suppressing the ghost of a smile. There was a bench in this gallery, and she felt like she might faint at any moment, so she sat on it. Almost collapsed onto it.

Ava grinned, sat down, and rested her head on Beatrice's shoulder. "Sorry. And you're right. The Gabriel blob is beautiful. Also, you're really warm. Do you have, like, a furnace in your shoulders?"

"Yes," said Beatrice distantly. "A whole power plant. Well, actually I think the Halo's heating me up."

"Hmm," muttered Ava. "Perks. Not all zombie revival body horror, I guess."

"Is it that bad?"

"No, I guess that part's just in my imagination. It's just...heavy," said Ava. "And it hurts, most of the time. Especially when I'm in bed. But it's fine, really. More of an ache. The weird part is just..." She gestured helplessly at the painting. "Being told what to do. Not by you guys, I mean. I don't know. By...God, or whatever."

Almost involuntarily, Beatrice started massaging Ava's back where the Halo was embedded, trying not to think too much about the muscles she could feel through the gaps in Ava's armor.

"But I've been thinking a lot about, like, my retirement plan," added Ava. "I want to live—have a real life that's more than hunting demons. When I'm free from the Halo, when my quadriplegia comes back. When I'm done with what they," she gestured vaguely at the ceiling, "What they want. And I've been doing research. I'll need enough money to hire a home health aide. I'll go to the beach every day. I honestly can't wait. Also, and I know you'll think this sounds dumb, but I really want to spend like a month just catching up on TV? Most of the shows I got to watch in the orphanage were kinda old."

"It doesn't sound dumb," said Beatrice. "It sounds perfect. And you'll be with friends. I...we'll be there. No matter what." She coughed. "If we don't die first. Which we won't."

Ava nodded seriously and shifted closer, pressing up to Beatrice's side. "I know." They sat there for a while, looking at the painting. The light from the Halo began to fade, and the room got darker. As clouds passed between the sun and the skylight, details in the painting flickered in and out. Sometimes, they could only see Gabriel. Sometimes, he looked less like an angel passing along instructions, and more like a portal.

"You know," said Ava, pointing to the Virgin Mary as the skylight brightened again, "She looks kind of curious too. Maybe even hopeful. I mean, there's a lot going on in her head."

"There's always more," said Beatrice, and Ava laughed. Beatrice hesitated, exhaled, and said, "What do you call it when a nun is given an impossible responsibility by God?"

"Huh?" murmured Ava, not really catching up to what was happening.

"A-nun-ciation," said Beatrice.

Ava straightened, lifting her head and gaping at Beatrice from just a few inches away. The expression on Beatrice's face was adorably proud. And scared. And hopeful. And... "Can I kiss you?" whispered Ava.

Beatrice tried to say _yes_ , but she couldn't make her voice work, so she found herself just mouthing the word. She quickly nodded in case that wasn't enough. She felt Ava's lips brush against the corner of her mouth and in her chest it felt like there were churning wheels of light, burning her from inside out, clearing out sightlines to every part of herself. It felt like the ecstasy of battle, like breathing through chainmail with the taste of iron and death in the air. Then Ava's mouth was on hers, and for one blissful minute she couldn't feel anything at all.

Ava imagined this was what it felt like to be a jellyfish in the ocean, not drowning but breathing the saltwater in. Free to float in any dimension, but with no desire to be anywhere but _here_ , to stay _here_ and sink into the sunless depths. She was cold, but it was okay, because Beatrice was warm and Beatrice was here. Part of herself she left up on the surface, silently excoriating herself to take it slow, reminding herself that Beatrice needed her to take it slow. So Ava was the first one to notice a slow tapping echoing through the gallery.

She opened her eyes and saw Lilith, absolutely covered in blood and entrails, her witchy fingernails out and tapping impatiently on the hilt of her sword. Camila was staring and grinning from ear to ear. Mary was averting her eyes and smiling faintly.

Ava reluctantly pulled away and nodded towards the sister warriors. "Umm," she whispered, not quite sure how to break this to Beatrice, who abruptly spun around and shot up, looking pale. "H-hey guys," said Ava, getting up too.

Lilith rolled her eyes. "Thanks for the help with the _demons_ , Ava. You know, the ones who were possessing the curators? The ones you were supposed to be hunting? Does that ring a bell, Ava?" She threw an unidentifiable organ at Ava, who ducked just in time. As it splatted to the floor, narrowly falling short of the painting, Lilith made a hurry-up gesture with her hands. "Let's _go_ , Ava. I'm starving."

Ava bounced in place onto the heels of her feet and contorted her face into a beleaguered expression. "Why are you yelling at me and not Bea too? Also whose organs are these?"

"Sister Beatrice is fine. She did all the prep work for this mission," said Lilith, raising her hand as she approached and waiting patiently for Beatrice to retrieve the presence of mind to return her high-five. As their palms collided Beatrice swayed slightly like a flower in a strong breeze. Lilith cast a mildly regretful glance at the blood she'd just transferred to Beatrice's hand. "And she has extra clothes in her backpack."

That seemed to shake Beatrice back to life. "You can change when we get to the car. Before you sit down, please. We can't afford a cleaning charge on the rental," she said, trying to pull herself together as they all walked out of the museum's back exit together into a tree-dappled sunset. She unconsciously reached out to hold Ava's hand. Their hands squelched a little because of the blood, and the ensuing snort of quiet laughter from Mary turned Beatrice's ears red, but Ava just held on tighter.

In the hotel bar that night, Camila and Beatrice sang _Landslide_ on the karaoke stage. Very badly. Well, Camila had a good voice, but...Ava still wasn't sure what had made Beatrice decide this was a good idea. Neon lights shined kaleidoscope rainbows onto their skin as they sang, and Ava's heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest and spray her guts across the room. Mary had already gone to bed; one drink in and she'd muttered something unintelligible about Shannon, patted Ava on the back, and walked upstairs. Ava wanted to check on her, but Beatrice had stopped her. _Talk to her in the morning_ , she'd said. _Trust me._ Ava did.

Ava tore her eyes away from the stage for a second now to look over to Lilith, who was drinking a soda with her eyes trained on Camila and looking weirdly satisfied. Ava leaned towards her tipsily. "Lilith..." It felt very important to say this right, and as Lilith turned to face her it wasn't helping that Ava thought she could see flames dancing in Lilith's irises, the only light source in their grimy bar-corner booth. _Jesus, Lilith, would it kill you to blink every ten seconds like a person?_ Ava cleared her throat and tried again. "Lilith, you know I'm in this fight, right? I'm here. I'd die for you." She swallowed. "Kill for you. For all of you. I'll do whatever I need to. I'm sorry I didn't understand at first."

Lilith took another sip, taking her time and somehow managing to make drinking ginger ale with a straw look creepy. Finally, she nodded curtly. "I know," she said. Camila fell off the stage laughing at Beatrice, who was wailing _fraaaaaaaaaaaaid of chaaaaaangiiin'_ like her eternal salvation depended on breaking the microphone. Glancing at Camila to make sure she was all right, Lilith lost her composure and cracked a fond smile containing more teeth than seemed possible. "I know, Ava. We're glad you're here."

**Author's Note:**

> Henry Ossawa Tanner did move to France for the last five decades of his life, but contrary to the liberties I took here, his Annunciation now resides at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the city where he grew up and trained. Photographs and reproductions don't do it justice.


End file.
